Been a while since the last one, according to my search, so just curious how the different codecs are doing these days in terms of popularity.

My vote goes to Ogg Vorbis. I will not claim I can hear a difference between a High Quality-MP3 and the newer codecs, but it's nontheless good to know that the latest listening tests have indicated that Ogg Vorbis is still playing at top with the best of them.

So, since most of us don't really hear a difference between the good codecs, at least if we're talking medium bitrates and above, the choice depends on other things than audio quality. For me, the reason to use Vorbis, rather than say MP4, is mostly that Vorbis is free as in both beer and speech. We've been provided this excellent codec for free as a service to the people, by the people, so I make sure to join the good karma. Plus, it's also very easy to both obtain and use, which cannot always be said about the competitors (download and buy nero anyone?).

My vote will go to MPC for all lossy purposes. But in a few years space will be plenty then I'll use only lossless for audio (lossy for video still). Seriously, in 10 years do you think any of us will care which lossy audio codec is better?

This post has been edited by atici: Feb 25 2005, 03:52

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The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

mp3 for me, mostly because it is pervasive and I can easily use it on portable players and know it will be supported. And thats the format most of my music comes in its original form, and I dont want to transcode everything. Plus I cant tell teh different between any of them.

As for not caring about lossy codecs in 10 years, I dont agree at all. There will always be room for lossy codecs. With increased space and bandwidth, people will just be able to store more and download more.

Some people may prefer to download one 2gb album in lossless format, or store a few albums on their ipod, but I think more people would prefer to download 40 albums in the same 2gb bandwidth usage, or store many hundreds of albums in their ipod in a lossy format in which they cant tell the difference.

Porn still comes in lossy jpeg format, even though hardrives are big enough to store lossless .pngs. Theres just a hell of a lot more of it, at higher res etc. The same goes for any media.

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I voted Ogg Vorbis as that's what I use on my iRiver iHP-120 currently. If and when (looks more like when ) Rockbox gets finished and gives me Musepack support it will be Musepack for my portable from now on.

If you listen to files on your computer, you either use lossless of MP3, AAC of Ogg Vorbis (the only hardware-supported codecs, I do not count WMA). I have an archive of my files on FLAC DVD-R's (that is until I can afford a 200 or so GB HD). For my computer and portable, on both of which I cannot hear a difference from FLAC I use the cutting-edge version of LAME.

Whenever something else comes along that changes things enough or has hardware support, I will encode to it.

As somebody else said already, will anyone care in 10 years? (I say 3-5 years before we see DAPs/HDs with enough storing space/battery to hold lossless files, then this will be non-important).

I would poll on HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU CHANGED CODEC/SETTINGS IN THE LAST TWO YEARS.

I would say most of us have done it two or three times.

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I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.Reseņas de Rock en Espaņol: www.estadogeneral.com

I used to be an AAC user when I got my iPod but now I've been reripping my collection with EAC and LAME MP3. The reason for switching is for the most compatibility while achieving high quality.

The time of the floppy disk is finally done; ABS and airbags are standard equipment on new vehicles; MPEG4 plays on inexpensive standalone DVD players.I think it's time to let go, and not worry about the legacy support so much. Or maybe it's time to FLAC it all, since we're headed there anyways

I think it's time to let go, and not worry about the legacy support so much. Or maybe it's time to FLAC it all, since we're headed there anyways

Word.

(I'm a recent lossless convert BTW, with that insurance, I am willng to try whatever lossy codec comes down the road with hardware support until lossless becomes the standard, it shouldn't be that much)

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I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.Reseņas de Rock en Espaņol: www.estadogeneral.com

I've used LAME since I started frequenting HA, but a lot of my MP3s were encoded using Radium @ 128kbps. My hearing isn't fantastic, so I don't have any problems with ~128kpbs.

I am quite tempted to switch to OGG or AAC, but I have an MP3 CD player in the car, which is where I get to listen to most of my music. Until I listen to most of my music on something that will play OGG or AAC I don't see the point in a switch.

I now have all my CDs in APE format, so the idea is that I will, sometime soon, get a 250GB external hardrive on which to store them. This will then provide the facility to very easily transcode everything to a lossy format of my choice.

I expect the first run will still be to LAME ~128kbps though. It will be nice to be shot of some of those early mistakes, like Xing and BladeEnc.

About two years ago I finally decided to go lossless (FLAC) after spending the years before constantly switching and reripping my collection (and then some) to the latest and greatest lossy format (mp3, ogg, mpc, ...) of the moment. I think it's a learning process most of us go through. At first I was content just having music in mp3 form (xing ) but gradually I discovered and started to appreciate the recording quality of good cd's and wanted to preserve this as much as possible in it's digital form. Lossless in the end gives me a nice peace of mind that what I'm doing is not for nothing when yet another format becomes popular.

Maybe the story above is a little offtopic here but what it comes down to nowadays is that I have my lossless (constantly growing) archive from which I can generate any file in any lossy format I want. This means whatever the latest and greatest format of the month is I can always give it a try. I still follow the advances made in the lossy formats but I look at it from another point of view : I'm not constantly in search anymore for the ultimate, best commandline or qualitysettings.

Maybe we should have a few different polls (iv included my answers ), e.g.:

1. which lossy codec do you use - mp32. which lossy codec would you use if all hardware supported all lossy codecs - aac3. which lossy codec do you think is the most technically advanced - aac4. which lossy codec do you think is the codec of the future - aac

For portable player compatibilty with less battery draining, mp3 is my weapon of choice. I do like Ogg Vorbis, but I'd only use it on my portable (lossless on home PC) and it drains too much battery life.

When the rockbox team release their iRiver software, then I'll take a look at mpc (if they support it) and wavpack (for the hybrid).

I've voted for MP3. When hard drive space was more of an issue for me I'd use MPC. I'm gradually making the change to WAVPACK lossless for the majority of my new rips and if I go lossy I'll use MPC, this is very rarely. MP3 I use for my car stereo and so is now my most frequently used lossy codec.

The only difference is that (after WMA Lossless and FLAC) I've now gone to WavPack for lossless.

Ah well some use FLAC, some use WavPack, some even use APE the beauty of it is that it's lossless and that my music will sound just the same if I converted it to WavPack or whatever format I might get in mind.I do however notice that there's much less negative conversations between the people using lossless encoders. Sometimes people tend to start flamewars over lossy's encoders quality that are just childish (in the sense of mine is bigger than yours). Lossless avoids the quality issue alltogether and imho lays the emphasis on features. I know some lossless encoders might compress better than others but it isn't such a big a deal to me anymore. I want something that does it's job! FLAC does a splendid job for me and WavPack might do a splendid job for you ...In the end it's all in function of the music I want to hear.

I'm still a Vorbis user. My reasons are excellent support on Windows & Linux, the ability to convert FLAC directly to Vorbis in terminal and keep my tags, and every player worth downloading has support for vorbisgain.

After so many years of band practice in a tiny warehouse all of the lossy encoders are transparent TO ME at their respective recommended settings (and most times slightly below the recommended settign) so it's the features that decided for me.

That being said, I would only be half-posting if I didn't mention OptimFrogDS which I use for 'special' songs. I'm still not satisfied with WavPack's Linux support.